A few weeks ago we spent an entire show talking about side hustles, and this morning Tim was off in Vegas for one of those side hustles. But The Morning After Ministry Show must go on, so Andrew’s wife Melissa is filled in as co-host this morning. Melissa is currently leading the children’s ministry at Safety Harbor Community Church, has spent a decade or so as a small group leader, and spent a formative summer interning in a large church’s children’s ministry.

We opened the show by talking about a series called “Hurt” that we released on DYM a few years ago. We have redone the look and feel of the series to minister to student and resource ministries who are addressing issues brought up by 13 Reasons Why. The news season comes out in a few weeks, and we are giving the series away to anyone who leaves us a rating and review on itunes. Just screenshot your review and send it to us and we’ll send you the series!

Since the topic of the show today was internships, we brought on Allison Williams. Allison is a youth minister in Indiana, and has written an incredible resource for anyone supervising interns. It can be found here https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/ten-week-internships-to-go. We discussed the do’s and don’ts of leading interns, and the amount of work that goes into a healthy internship program. Allison’s said that Healthy internships:1 Are more work than benefit to your ministry 2. Have clear roles and expectations 3. Are always being evaluated 4. Expose the intern to as many areas of the church as possible 5. Set the intern up for long term success. While Unhealthy internships…1. Make the intern an errand-runner or coffee guy 2. Never let the intern take the lead 3. Never talk about money 4. Let the intern be bored 5. Shelter the intern from the pain and realities of ministry.

Next Andrew played a conversation that he had with our friend Collin this weekend. Both Andrew and Collin spent significant time interning at high profile churches, and neither internship turned out the way either of them expected it to. However, just because they were different than they expected them to be, the internships were both formational, and look good on resumes.